VMware vSAN 8 - What's New

VMware recently announced VMware vSAN8 during VMware explore 2022, dedicated this article talking about some of those enhancements and the latest features which have been added. With vSAN8 VMware introduced vSAN express storage architecture which uses single-tier architecture as compared to the vSAN original storage architecture which uses two-tier architecture (dedicated cache and capacity disks) and is able to accommodate a wide range of storage devices and uses disks groups to provide performance through caching and capacity. 

Image Source : VMware.com

vSAN8 Express Storage Architecture uses a single tier architecture and is optimized for high-performance NVME- based flash devices, without using disk groups, and all the devices contribute toward performance and capacity. The advancements in vSAN8 architecture come from the new log-structured file system a new layer in the vSAN stack that allows vSAN to ingest data fast and prepare the data for full stripe write. Another layer that has been added in the vSAN8 stack is the vSAN Log-structured object manager which helps in minimizing the metadata overhead.

When it comes to incorporating the vSAN8 into the production environment , vSAN8 can co-exist with the existing vSAN clusters, and we can easily migrate the VM’s from the old vSAN cluster to the new vSAN8 cluster using ESA. We can upgrade to VSAN8 and still stay on the original two-tier architecture (original storage architecture) which will introduce all the enhancements to the original storage architecture.

VMware vSphere8 - The Enterprise Workload Platform

VMware's Flagship product VMware vSphere 8 was announced yesterday in VMwareExplore 2022 which bring's the benefit of Cloud to On-premises workloads.

Super Charged Workload Performance - vSphere 8 Introduces Data processing units using VMware vSphere Distributed Services Engine, wherein the modern application hosted on infrastructure is distributed between CPU and DPU. And further enhances the performance by providing more cpu resources to workloads.

Accelerate Innovation for DevOps - With VMware vSphere 8 VMware is delivering TKG 2.0 (Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 2.0) which is designed to address complexities of agile environments. Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 2.0 is tightly integrated with VMware vSphere 8 giving more flexibility to vSphere users to transform to Kubernetes.

Enhanced Operational Efficiency - VMware vSphere8 also add further improvements towards Distributed Resources Scheduler wherein the DRS can now make more intelligent placement decisions based on the memory needs of the workloads.

                                  Introducing VMware vSphere 8 

Recently I got a chance to get my hands on the latest Vembu BDR Suite 5.2 and there are pretty cool new features which have been added, The last version I worked on and dedicated a detailed blog post was v4.0 and from v4.0 to v5.2 there have been many new features that have been added to Vembu BDR 5.2 like Restoring to Microsoft Azure, BDR Suite 360 Server and Multi-tenancy.

What's New - Vembu BDR Suite 5.2

Restore to Microsoft Azure

BDRSuite now allows restoring the VMware VMs, Hyper-V VMs, Windows Servers & Windows Workstations backups to Microsoft Azure. You can initiate the restore directly from your BDRSuite Backup Server or Offsite DR Server

BDRSuite 360 Server

The BDRSuite 360 Server enables customers and service providers to monitor the backup activity of the BDRSuite Backup Servers deployed on their customer locations across multiple sites from a centralized web-based console.

Multitenancy

The multitenancy architecture of BDRSuite is redesigned to support advanced use cases of MSPs. You can now create multiple tenants and allocate one or more entities to each tenant. Every tenant will get multiple user roles to monitor and manage all the entities added under them.

Enhancements in BDRSuite v5.2

• Improved application creation steps to add Microsoft 365 accounts to BDRSuite

• On-demand backup scheduling for Microsoft 365 backups

• Enhanced backup progress window for Microsoft 365 backups

• Enhanced backup report for Microsoft 365 backups

• Subfolder tree view for Microsoft 365 Mailbox

• Subfolder tree view for OneDrive

• Subfolder tree view for Group OneDrive

• User-level backup report for Microsoft-365

• PST Download of Microsoft 365 now supports all Microsoft Outlook versions

• On-demand backup scheduling for Google Workspace backups.

Installation and Configuration 

The installation of Vembu BDR Suite v5.2.0 is pretty straightforward and we can opt out for a Standalone Installation (recommended where only one BDR Suite Backup Server is Deployed) or Cluster Installation (recommended for scalability and load balancing).

When Selecting the cluster installation type we further have the option to select how we want to install the main node in the cluster and the database associated with it.

Once the installation is completed login using the default username and password (admin) and start configuring Vembu BDR Suite by registering the backup server (for license management), configure Backup Repository, adding data sources for backup and configuring your backup jobs (creation and scheduling).

After registering the backup server the next task on the list is to configure the Backup Repository to store your data.

Depending upon the type of storage we can select the repository type for NAS select Simple and select Scale Out when pooling multiple storage volumes and select Disk Rotation if you want to add only one disk with a flexibility to rotate the disk with a new One when it's full.

Add Data Sources - 1) VMware vSphere (ESXi and vCenter) and Backup Proxy for VMware, 2) Add Microsoft Hyper-V (Hyper-V Cluster, Hyper-V Servers StandAlone and SMB) 3), Microsoft Windows.

Configure Backups : While selecting the basic job details we have an option to create a job without using a template wherein we want to create a backup from scratch or we have an option to create a job using an existing template.

Will be able to see the inventory list from the datasource we have added and then we can select the server we want to backup and create the backup job by adding simple job details, which disk to include / exclude , scheduling, and save the backup configuration.

** While configuring the backup job we have an option to select the individual VM's we want to backup or select the entire ESXi host which will then backup all the VM's running on that ESXi host.

Restore Backup Data / Recovery : Vembu BDR allows us to restore backup data from BDR Suite Backup Server using multiple recovery options.

• Instant Boot VM
• Full VM Recovery
• Disk Mount
• Disk Level Recovery
• Download VMs & Disk(s) 
• Recovery to Microsoft Azure
• File Level Recovery
• Microsoft Exchange Server Recovery
• Microsoft SQL Server Recovery
• Microsoft Active Directory Recovery
• Microsoft SharePoint Recovery 
• Bare Metal Recovery (V2P)

Depending upon the type of scenario we have the and based on the need of the recovery there are various options to choose from, for example Instant Boot VM help us recover our virtual machine with minimal amount of downtime and ensure business continuity and disaster recovery.

Summary and Final Thoughts

Vembu BDRSuite is a comprehensive Backup and Disaster Recovery solution for virtual, physical, cloud, and SaaS applications and is designed to meet all the backup requirements of small, medium, and enterprise businesses. Vembu BDR offers Agent-less Backup for VMware, Hyper-V VM's, AWS EC2 Instances, Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace.

I think since I have started using Vembu BDR 4.x till today Vembu has came a long way with all the new feature's that has been added to the product itself and the overall enhancement's done towards day 2 support, by adding detailed documentation of product installation and configuration, white papers, knowledge bases is something which is remarkable.

Download a free trial edition of BDRSuite v5.2 here: Download Vembu BDR Suite – vembu.com